Mugabe and other Leftist Heroes

AS the author of this article, Bret Stephens, notes, the atrocities of Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe’s regime have been long known.  Even those that once honoured him have withdrawn the early approval.

“The real mystery is why Western liberals and progressives so often fall for the Mugabes of the world, and why they seem to learn so little from successive and inevitable disenchantments.

When will they stop confusing national independence with individual freedom, liberation with liberty?”

I have an answer: it is only superficially because “being progressive, as the conservative saying goes, means never having to say you are sorry.”

The real reason is that the underlying philosophy of history of the progressive will not admit any principled restraint on progress, precisely because any such principles would themselves be regarded as unexamined prejudices to be removed in the name of progress.

‘Progress’, by this understanding, is the human control over human existence and the rejection of God’s sovereign predestination of human history.  However, as Romans 1 puts it, ‘since the invisible attributes (of God), namely, his eternal power and divine nature, ⁿhave been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world,⁷ in the things that have been made”, this means the eradication of the human race that blights Rousseau’s pristine view of ‘nature’.

It might be embarrassing, but the doctrine of ‘progress’, as is clear in abortionist and environmentalist policies, is now measured by the removal of all predication attached to human nature, human beings themselves being a sort of predicate.

Read the full article in the New York Times